In the past a number of attempts have been made to address the multiple problems involved with freezing pipes and leaking water lines or appliances and fall into several well known, prior art fields namely;
1. Manual cut-off valves with some incorporating a waste or drain valve such as U.S. Pat. No. 1,003,307.
2. Dump valves which are sometimes manual while others are solenoid operated such as the dump valve for a cooling system as taught in U.S. Pat. No. 4,766,925 which is air activated. 3. Electrically controlled drip valves which open by an electrical solenoid to keep a small flow of water flowing through a given water circuit such as U.S. Pat. No. 4,635,688.
4. Solenoid operated shut-off valves which respond to a flood condition such as U.S. Pat. No. 4,324,268.
5. Flow control systems which measures the amount of water required in normal usage and when the usage exceeds the normal requirement shuts off the main up-stream supply. One of these systems such as taught by White in U.S. Pat. No. 4,730,637 requires an extensive, complicated system which involves multiple shut-off and drain valves, flow sensors, etc.
6. Programmable systems such as proposed by Mallett in U.S. Pat. No. 4,180,088 which must be attended at least twice daily and incorporates a "flow sensor" which shuts off the water supply whenever flow occurs, no matter how minute, when the device is in the "automatic" position.
Each of the above approaches have inherent difficulties, which the present invention addresses while none of them, whether taken singly or in combination, disclose the specific details of the combination of the present invention in such a way as to bear upon the claims of the present invention.